[CrystalGamma]

Teletypes, which might have been what people where thinking of in the 60s and early 70s, didn't have a CPU AFAIK.

[Retric]

IBM 2260 video display terminal dates back to 1964 and is rather different from a Teletype though it also does not really have a CPU.

The IBM 3270 on the other hand does significantly more processing on the device and dates to 1972 which would have made it well known in the late 70's computing world.

[digi_owl]

I think what most people envision when talking about a terminal is the lowly VT100.

[Retric]

Which has an 8080 CPU...

Now a 2MHz 8 bit CPU chip may not seem very powerful. But, people wrote very useful software using far less.